07/01/2011

“When it rains, it pours,” “if it can go wrong, it will go wrong,” “SNAFU,” and “FML.” Ummmm, sure, we’ll go with all those…..

I still have no idea why I was experiencing the audio problems spoken of yesterday but a workaround was discovered, and that was enough to solve it. It an hour or so, maybe more. But it also could have been worse. So that’s the past – I know what to do next time. Good. Done.

So now we’re on to today. I wake up an hour earlier than what has been the norm lately, pour some coffee, hit the power button on my desktop system and……it doesn’t boot. Numbers “2” and “4” are lit up. That means it’s a graphics card issue. I pull out the computer, partially disassemble it and remember that Los Angeles is a dusty place like no other. Well, compared to Ohio, at least. These computers get cleaned semi frequently but the dust bunnies do pile up quick. I vacuum the video card and the rest of the components off, put the card back in, and nothing has changed. I have officially declared my ol’ Geforce 6 to be dead. Kaput. Toast. Gone to meet its maker (in Texas?)

I suppose troubles are inevitable for do-it-yourselfers… but everything was just going so well for a month straight. So rather than actually dealing with it, I am just going to write about it…and laugh. That’s an important one – to not take everything too seriously (so you don’t go crazy) and to just laugh.

07/01/2011

So a while earlier I was starting to write an entry under duress. The words and phrases just kept getting darker and darker, so I hit CTRL+A and DELETE and thought I would start again.

Starting fresh, happy Thursday to you all. Although I should be mixing audio rather than typing, I really need to take a little break. My throat is getting raw from trying to experiment with comp vocals. Sometimes I tell myself that the words are the key ingredient in the mix, but then I always revert to Nirvana. After listening to “modern rock” radio for 15 or so years, I still don’t know all the words to most of that band’s songs.

Nevertheless, I am looking for flow. I want it all the elements to sound good and fit together, and my building frustration earlier came from audio software that just wouldn’t cooperate. I am on a strict, though self-imposed, deadline. My day job resumes next week, and I was hoping to have 5 songs totally done and ready to ship by….well…tomorrow. I wrote my first song eight years ago, but I haven’t recorded with modern technology for quite as long. The learning curve is still there, and I discovered just a couple days ago – when I thought I only had one song left to wrap up – that I have been crushing my song mixes. They don’t really sound that bad, but they also don’t sound as clean as they should. Bringing down the level of the audio tracks seems like such an easy fix, but it really changes the sound of the mixes, so I have to make some changes accordingly. This all stems from researching the “loudness wars.” There is a lot of technical jargon involved in explaining these compressed signals and the reasoning for them, so the simplest suggestion is to do a “loudness wars” search on YouTube, if you don’t have anything better to do. Under that search, the Metallica video is the best example of what’s going on….and how crappy the audio sounds that’s being sold today.

Well, I am off. I have been sipping on some hot tea while writing this, and I think I am ready to get back to putting some more vocal tracks down. Adios!